Reality
by thedoveofwar
Summary: Gadreel does not die in this timeline-one of the few which currently exist-but he is not left without the repercussion of having lived when he wasn't meant to either. Warnings for attempted suicide, depression/suicidal thoughts, and hella feels.


**Author's Note:** Hi, again! I'm not sure what inspired me to create this piece, and I assure you I'm not normally this dark nor am I normally this torturous to Gadreel (I love him with all of my heart, I really do). But, here it is. Leave reviews and inspire me! Criticism is always welcomed, too. I do have warnings for his attempted suicide in Heaven, his suicidal thoughts/depression, and general sad feels. I hold out hope for the little guy, though. He's strong and who knows? I believe Gadreel can overcome a plethora of things.

 **Disclaimer:** I do not and never will own anything of Supernatural.

* * *

Gadreel is beyond exhausted as he wakes from his seventh nightmare of the night.

There is a heaviness slowly etching into the taut lines of his vessel's body; an otherworldly weariness whispering along the nooks and crevices of his mind that he doesn't dare go near anymore since his attempted suicide. But, there it is—the traces of the latest nightmare crawling underneath his sweat-soaked skin and carving him open like a wound left too long to fester. Flashes of fraying memories are interwoven with treacherous thoughts, and suddenly the flames of that hell are searing down his stiffening spine like an actual, physical thing.

A soft breath is knocked out of him as he sinks into that familiar sensation, his fingers tensing and curling sharply around the thin sheets spread around him until they throb with agony and he's forced to let go.

His nose is currently pressed flat against the uncomfortably warm pillow, his hair left in a strange disarray from the amount of twisting and turning he does in-between these nightmares, and his back is arching with a dull ache underneath the weight of that nothingness, with the tongues of that blistering fire that are left to feast along his frame. The scorching frustration from that alone is enough to cause his eyes to sting, and he absolutely loathes the way these human emotions— _emotions that he is becoming disturbingly acquainted with_ —make it so easy. He crushes the heel of his hands into the sockets of his eyes and weakly shoves himself into an upright position.

This—the nightmares, the constant underlying thrum of pain, the fatigue, the pure helplessness that scalds at his very being until he's but a husk of hollowness and shame—it's becoming a routine, if it hasn't already become one. And perhaps it will be his routine, he thinks. His own twisted, merciless _redemption_ —the one he's been so keen on begging for. As if his nightmares, the fuel that ignites in the pit of his core, the inferno steadily swallowing him whole, will make up for the lives he's cost. As if any of his suffering will be enough to bring his brethren back to life, or right his wrongs.

 _As if anything he does will ever be enough to amount to something._

And there, his entire body violently flinches away from that whisper of thought. The spring coils creak feebly underneath him in protest at the sudden movement, but he pays them no mind. His hands fly up to cover his face but somehow end up knotting painfully in his hair while he struggles to wrestle that thought— _that miserable, disgusting sickness_ —back into the depths from where it had escaped.

His eyes close despite the inherit dangers of that particular motion, and he feels the darkness swirl like cold wisps along his overheated skin and at the edges of his vision. Exhaustion slinks into his muscles and the insides of his bones again. At least that line of thought is tucked away for now, nothing but a slick murmur in its sullen corner as his fingers ease from their hold. Night beckons him to lie upon his back and rest in the way that only angels do, with hellish nightmares drawing him closer in for another burning agony in maybe an hour or so.

He almost does—his back is curving until he hangs as heavy as his heart and it's weighing him near that restless slumber, he's just so _tired_ —but, he opens his eyes last minute and cards his trembling fingers through his disheveled hair. As if on some cue, his brother's voice, _Castiel's voice_ , rings out to him in a rare moment of clarity:

 _If you do this, you are killing them all over again, Gadreel._

 _I am honoring them with this last chance, brother. Do not make it out to be different._

 _You are wasting their memories and everything they have taken a stand for—everything they have sacrificed for us to be here now._

 _I am giving Heaven a chance!_

 _You are causing another needless death!_

It had been enough to cause him to stutter in his actions.

Hannah had cast open the space, his 'cell' a slip of nothingness between dimensions, and angrily ripped the shard of warped reality from his hand to throw it across the confining fabric of space. But, it would have been right then, he thinks. He would have died in that space—his home, for as many eons he spent there in agony and torment and everything in-between with Abner at his side, with Thaddeus lurking just inches away—but he didn't.

And it's a shadowy niggling in his mind, more of a sensation than a concept, but he knows shouldn't have existed beyond that point. A separate reality that ran parallel to them had proven it so, as he is sure Hannah and Castiel had seen in that moment with him. In the dimensions and realities intertwined, much like the threads composing the sheets on his bed, he had briefly viewed every Gadreel in existence—as does every angel—and felt the precise moment in which his Grace had ripped apart with each one. His wavelength of celestial divinity had bled through the wound to cause shockwaves that had rippled at the very fabric of their reality with the sheer force. If the explosion had not been contained by the 'walls' of his confinement, then the fabric would have suffered a worse fate in Heaven than it had on Earth.

As it is, he's not sure if the nightmares are an effect of that ripple, or if they are simply nightmares—creations of his own that haunt him in ways Thaddeus could have never perceived.

He finds he is not too curious to think of it much more as his body curves inward on itself in weariness. Cold fabric presses flush against his equally-chilled skin while he slumps down into the mattress once more. Outside of his room, he can hear the morning bustle—perhaps Samuel and Castiel, since they seem to rise with the sun—and he hazily wishes he could be there with them. But, his eyes slip shut into the dark landscape of nightmares again and he is too immersed with his own demons to do much else but drift off.

In but an hour or so, the cycle will repeat until he is beckoned or awakened.

Until then, he rests like only angels do—exhaustion extinguishing the fires until they reawaken as he does—and lets the night in and succumbs.

* * *

Again, feel free to review or yell at me. Either one is acceptable since I felt horrible doing this to him. But, much love!


End file.
